While reading tablet reviews, yup still tableting, it seems there are Nexus 7's to be had wot nobody wants. If this thing's so hot why doesn't anybody want one? Size dear boy, size.
The one wot's gone off the shelves has 16 gigabytes of storage, if that's the right term, and the one that's still about, wot nobody wants, only has 8 gigabytes. I repeat, only 8 gigabytes.
Anyone out there remember floppy disks? 5 inch disks could hold a whopping, what, one megabyte? Then the 3 1/2 inch plastic cased fellows came along with a jaw dropping capacity of one and a half megabytes! And were almost unbreakable. Almost.
The first spread sheet I ever got came on one 5 inch floppy. Guess what? It was absolutely perfect. With the aid of that software*, I managed to keep rigs shiny side up and barnacle side down for many, many years.
*and a computer.
I remember getting a new desk-top computer in the late nineties with an internal hard drive so huge it was breath taking – 500 megabytes. Never got close to filling it.
A little later, at great expense, I got myself a portable hard drive. If you consider carrying something the size of a house brick and a cable that looked like it could connect straight to the grid, then it was portable. The capacity? A staggering 40 megabytes. A 40 megabyte brick! Never got close to filling it.
The total size of everything I've owned in the past would probably have trouble filling the smallest available thumb drive presently available.
Now? 8 gigabytes aint big enough for something that doesn't seem to do a whole hell of a lot? I don't believe it! Given the choice which would I go for, assuming I need, at the absolute most, 1 gig? Oh please, come on! Give your head a shake! The 16 giggly-bits one of course…
In days of yore, where did I keep all that stuff I didn't want to loose? 5 inch, then 3 inch disks, all carefully labelled, then a portable, parallel connected brick, then, what a relief! the final storage/preserving solution – CD's… But for how long? Not much longer I'll wager. Now? They want us to store stuff in the 'cloud'. Yea, right.
All that old, carefully stored stuff? Floppy disks, portable drives and scratched, 'Can't Recognize Format' CD's, with all the memories? In various land-fill sites. Gone.
For posterity, before it's too late, I think I'll print this blog, find a deep cave some place and chip the words into the walls. At least it stands a chance of being found sometime in the future, say in a thousand years, by our descendants. Or aliens.
{Note to self; Chipping words – possible task for the little nest of vipers. If the caves deep enough.}
Then, after some guy, or alien, finally deciphers the find and explains it to his boss or bosses, or alien or alieness, I can just imagine their reaction. "Say what now? That's it? That's all it is? You're telling me, that despite a budget of billions, it's taken you and your talented team of twenty, two years to find out they didn't leave us any messages? We've learned nothing? Wait a minute. I guess there's one thing we've learned; our ancestors were seriously nuts."
Quote; Jeremy Irons.
“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.”
Oscar Wilde.
"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us."
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